For those who long for the connectivity of small-town
life, yet don't want to give up the conveniences of urban living,
neotraditional communities provide an alternative.

Designed to include everything within easy walking
distance -- from the corner grocery to the school, and perhaps even
the office -- they appeal to die-hard pedestrians. Advocates say
the traditional neighborhood design, or TND, concept, which has
been around since the mid-1980s, is picking up steam.

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But don't be blinded by the label. Critics say not
everything claiming to be a "traditional" neighborhood lives up
to its billing. And while a pedestrian lifestyle can cut down on
trips to the gas station and maybe even the number of cars a family
needs, detractors say those financial gains might not offset the
higher costs of TND homes.

TND grew out of the new urbanism movement, a response
to suburban sprawl and a growing dependence on automobiles, says
John O. Norquist, president and CEO of the Congress
for the New Urbanism and a former mayor of Milwaukee.

Norquist cites three factors that historically combined
to create the current American landscape of disparate neighborhoods.
One was zoning practices that segregated commercial and retail districts
from residential neighborhoods. Another was the overbuilding of
highways. Finally, the secondary mortgage market, until recently,
favored separately zoned, single-family homes.

"Together," says Norquist, "they created a situation
where people and their activities are spread over the landscape
in separate pods. The new urbanism is all about undoing that."

Unlike the long, undifferentiated sprawl of cookie-cutter developments that characterize much of suburbia now, he says, neotraditional neighborhoods must have a discernible center and edge. In that center, where a project's density is greatest, there should be ample public space in the form of a town square or urban park.

A pedestrian's paradise
Getting people out of their cars is among the new urbanists' major objectives. A maxim of TND is that almost everything residents need should be no more than a 10-minute walk away.

"In a two-income household," she says, "if one person
can get by without having a car for transit, that's an average savings
of $680 a month, which in turn can translate into the possibility
of homeownership. So it's a huge economic benefit."

York says new urbanists have given a lot of thought
to how roads are designed. They seek high levels of connectivity
in street grids to disperse auto traffic and make neighborhoods
pedestrian-friendly. To achieve that kind of walkability, TND supports
zoning laws that allow for a mix of shops, offices and homes within
the same area, the same block or even the same building.